Los Angeles Rams ordered to pay Reggie Bush $12.5 million after being found liable for injury

Bush slipped on a slab of concrete after being pushed out of bounds returning a punt in 2015 during a game in St. Louis

Reggie Bush has been the subject of several lawsuits many Angeleno sports fans are all-too-familiar with. On Tuesday, one more Bush-related case came to a close in St. Louis.

A jury ordered the Los Angeles Rams to pay Bush $12.45 million, $4.95 million in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages, after it found the team 100 percent liable for an injury he sustained in 2015 when the franchise was still in St. Louis.

Bush, then a member of the San Francisco 49ers, tore his meniscus in his left knee after being pushed out of bounds while returning a punt at the Edward Jones Dome on November 1, 2015. Bush’s momentum carried him beyond the sideline and onto a slab of uncovered concrete about 35 feet behind the 49ers bench where he slipped and fell, resulting in the injury. Bush’s legal team called the strip a “concrete ring of death.” A week before Bush suffered his injury, Cleveland Browns quarterback Josh McCown slipped on the same piece of concrete, hurting his shoulder.

“I’m very happy with the verdict,” Bush told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “The people spoke and decided very fairly.”

The Rams did not comment on the verdict, but the Post-Dispatch reported the team plans to file a motion for a new trial.

The lawsuit was originally filed in 2016 against the St. Louis Rams, St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority and the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. Last week, a judge dismissed the public agencies that owned and operated the Dome after they argued the Rams had control of operations at the facility on game days, leaving the team as the sole defendant.

After suffering the season-ending injury, Bush went on to sign a one-year contract with the Buffalo Bills in 2016. He finished that season with two carries for minus-3 yards, seven catches for 90 yards and one touchdown. He retired last year, ending his 11-year career.